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Date: | Wed, 31 Mar 1999 06:13:09 -0500 |
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Brass buttons are not easy to make, and they require considerable skill and
equipment. On the other hand, anyone can make buttons of bone or antler. It
just happens that I have occasion to deal with craft makers of both types
of button.
Right now, reindeer antler buttons are selling for exactly the same price
as hand-cast brass coat buttons. However, this reflects modern ideas of
time and work values, and may not reflect eighteenth-century comparative
values.
David Babson probably is right about availability. Bone and shell buttons
were made all over the place by cottage craft, but brass founding is a
rather arcane specialty, especially if patterns are involved. There's
plenty of archaeological evidence, however, that pewter casting was not
uncommon in Colonial America.
_____
___(_____) Gotta go. It's spring.
|Baby the\
|1969 Land\__===_ Never know when we might need to
| ___Rover ___|o help a J**p out of the mud.
|_/ . \______/ . ||
___\_/________\_/____________________________________________
Ned Heite, Camden, DE http://home.dmv.com/~eheite/index.html
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